Conventionally, content data such as music and moving image has been utilized through replay. The content data is replayed on an information processing apparatus such as a mobile telephone or a computer. In addition, if the content data is a song, for example, lyrics may be displayed as character information (text).
Especially in a service such as karaoke which is designed to assist user's singing activities, karaoke content data is prepared by combining a data piece corresponding to music and a data piece corresponding to lyric, and used in the service to display the lyrics in synchronization with the progress of the song.
Furthermore, some discussions have been made to realize karaoke-like services by replaying the music data and the text data in synchronization. Because a service for distributing music data for listening has already been popularized, a user can separately prepare lyric text data that correspond to the music data.
If the text data such as lyrics is to be displayed in synchronization with replay of content data such as a song, a part of the text data matching the replayed portion of the content data needs to be displayed.
In addition, in some cases, texts other than the one corresponding to the replayed portion may need to be displayed. An example of such a situation is that, while a portion of the lyric is displayed correspondingly to the replay of the music data, a user may wish to see a portion of the lyrics that is coming next, or to check a portion of the lyric that corresponds to a music portion which has already replayed.
One conventional solution to the above is to provide a separate area from an area displaying the text corresponding to the replayed portion, so that an arbitrary portion of the entire text data can be displayed in the separate area (see, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-163085).
However, the size of the display of a portable information processing apparatus such as a mobile telephone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), or a portable music player is limited because of the small-size housing of the apparatus itself. Hence, only a limited amount of information can be displayed thereon.
Therefore, it is difficult to provide a plurality of areas for displaying associated information such as lyrics as is suggested in the conventional technology. In some cases, an image, such as a video, other than the associated information cannot be displayed properly.
Furthermore, when there is an area for displaying an arbitrary portion of entire associated data, i.e., data including associated information, separately from an area for displaying associated information corresponding to the replayed portion, user operations would become cumbersome. In addition, correspondence between the contents displayed on the area for displaying the arbitrary portion of the entire associated data and the replayed portion is not indicated. Therefore, the user may confound the contents displayed in one display area with the contents of another display area, and may make incorrect operations. Furthermore, because a plurality of display areas are to be controlled individually, the control becomes complex.
Furthermore, if the size of the display is increased, so that the display areas for the associated information can be provided, the entire housing would be enlarged. Then, the apparatus becomes unsuitable as a portable device. In addition, costs may be increased due to increased price of the display itself.